Enrico Berlinguer

Berlinguer led the Italian Communist Party, the largest in the West, away from Moscow. He said Italy was safer inside NATO, condemned the military crackdown in Poland in 1981 and in 1973 proposed the 'historic compromise' with the Christian Democrats, which led the party to sustain a Christian Democrat government from 1976 to 1979 without joining it. Its vote peaked at 34 per cent in 1976. The compromise never produced a share in government, and the party's transformation was completed only after his death.